Wicked Ever After (A Blud Novel Book 7) by Delilah S. Dawson Read Free Book Online Page B

onlookers. I’d never been in here before; most of the carnivalleros were fiercely protective of their only private space. Torno shared his wagon with Eblick, but they were fortunate to have a carriage that was divided on the outside, like a duplex. Inside, the room was as tidy, spare, and masculine as Torno himself: sturdy wooden furniture, a coat rack, a few pinned-up posters of Italian strong men of old who looked suspiciously like past generations of Torno.
    Criminy walked to the bed and flipped up the edge of the bed skirt to show me where the dust on the floor was disturbed in exactly the shape of a suitcase.
    “That’s not like him,” I murmured. “Leaving without giving you notice.”
    “Which tells us something unusual has happened.”
    I stepped back to the doorway and looked through the peephole at the whispering crowd waiting beyond.
    “And no one knows anything at all?”
    “You’re the glancer, love. They figure that between your magical powers and my general sovereignty, we know everything.” He sighed and knelt to run a finger over a tiny dot on the worn wooden board. When he stood, he held it out.
    I sniffed. Blood.
    Criminy put his tongue to the red smear on his glove. “It’s not Torno’s, oddly enough.”
    “So Torno . . . killed someone in a fit of passion and ran away?”
    He didn’t even try to smother his bark of laughter. “You should’ve been a penny-dreadful novelist, love. That’s downright dastardly. Doesn’t seem like our Torno—same fellow who once found a crippled baby bludrabbit and nursed it back to health. Remember how surprised he was when it bit him? If you didn’t see him kill anyone in your glancing, is there a chance Ruby might’ve touched him and seen it? New glancers often wish to try out their powers, whether by stealth or for coppers.”
    “I haven’t seen her. We argued. I thought maybe she had . . .” I tilted my head toward the floor, where the drop of blood had been.
    “Such a deliciously diabolical mind.” He pulled me close and kissed my forehead, and my boot skidded on something. There were worse places to fall than into Criminy Stain’s arms.
    Bending down, I held up the culprit. A pin. Beside it, another, nestled between the wood boards.
    “Pins? This would make more sense if he’d had the good sense to kill Emerlie in the costume wagon,” Crim said, holding up the slender bit of metal.
    “Just our luck he didn’t,” I muttered.
    His answering chuckle was balm to my soul. At least Crim still liked me well enough.
    I walked to the wall, put a hand to an empty space between “Luigi the Strong Man” and “Mario the Magnificent.” The blue-striped wallpaper was dotted with tiny holes. “Did he have . . . a map here?”
    Crim joined me, cocking his head and pointing. “I think you might be right, love. If this was Sangland and this the mainland, the pinholes would mark all the places we’ve stopped over the years. See how many of them are clustered on London? Here’s Manchester and Glasgow. And this would be Paris, where we visited the cabarets. And here’s Italia, where he’s from.”
    “So he took a suitcase and this map. Which means he’s . . . somewhere in this hemisphere. Grand.”
    With a deep breath, Criminy went from amused, doting husband to whip-wielding ringmaster. He threw open Torno’s door and stood on the top step, arms crossed. “Torno is missing. Everyone visit your wagon and see if anything was taken or if anyone else is gone. Report anything unusual to me directly.”
    “Is he—” Emerlie started, but Criminy cut her off with a hand.
    “We don’t know. As of now, we don’t suspect foul play. See what you can find.”
    As the crowd turned to go, I put a hand on Crim’s arm and whispered, “Can you ask them about Nana?”
    “Oh, and if you should see a Bludwoman in a frilly pink dress—”
    “In a gentleman’s suit,” I interrupted.
    “In a gentleman’s suit.” Crim tried not to break his